Ripley Under Ground (13 page)

12

B
ernard did not answer, and Tom opened the door and went in and closed it behind him.

“Bernard?”

“Hm-m?— Tom?”

“Yes. Excuse me. Can I put on the light?”

“Of course.” Bernard sounded quite calm, and found the bedside light himself. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing. I mean, it’s just that I’ve got to talk to you and quietly, because I don’t want Chris to hear.” Tom pulled the straight chair rather close to Bernard’s bed, and sat down. “Bernard—I’m in trouble, and I’d like you to give me a hand, if you will.”

Bernard frowned with attention. He reached for his pack of Capstan Full-strength and lit one. “What’s the trouble?”

“Murchison is dead,” Tom said softly. “That’s why you don’t have to worry about him.”

“Dead?” Bernard frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because—I killed him. Here in the cellar.”

Bernard gasped. “
You
did? You don’t mean that, Tom!”

“Sh-h.” Oddly, Tom had the feeling Bernard was more sane than he at the moment. It made things more difficult for Tom, because he had anticipated a more bizarre reaction on Bernard’s part. “I had to kill him—here—and he’s buried now in the woods behind the house. My problem is, I’ve got to get him away from here tonight. The police are already telephoning, you see. Tomorrow they may come and look around.”

“Killed him?” Bernard said, still incredulous. “But why?”

Tom sighed, shuddering. “First, need I point out, he was going to explode Derwatt? Derwatt Ltd. Second and worst, he recognized me down in the cellar. He recognized my hands. He said, ‘You pretended to be Derwatt in London.’ It was suddenly all up. I had no intention of killing him when I brought him here.”

“Dead,” Bernard repeated, stunned.

Tom was impatient as the minutes slipped by. “Believe me, I did my best to make him let things alone. I even told him you were the forger, you the fellow he’d talked to in the bar of the Mandeville. Yes, I saw you there,” Tom said before Bernard could speak. “I told him you weren’t going to paint any more Derwatts. I asked him to let you alone. Murchison refused. So—will you help me get the corpse off my grounds?” Tom glanced at the door. It was still closed, and there had been no sound from the hall.

Bernard got slowly out of bed. “And what do you want me to do?”

Tom stood up. “In about twenty minutes, I’d be grateful if you gave me a hand. I’d like to take it away in the station wagon. It’ll be much easier if there’re two of us. I really can’t do the whole thing alone. He’s heavy.” Tom felt better, because he was talking the same way he often thought. “If you don’t want to help me, all right, I can try it alone, but—”

“All right, I’ll help you.”

Bernard spoke in a resigned way, as if he meant it, yet Tom mistrusted it. Was Bernard going to have some unpredictable reaction later, in half an hour? Bernard’s tone had been that of a saint saying to—well, someone superior to a saint, “I will follow, wherever you lead.”

“Could you put some clothes on? Those trousers I gave you today. Try to be quiet. Chris mustn’t hear us.”

“Right.”

“Can you be downstairs—outside the front steps in fifteen minutes?” Tom looked at his watch. “Twelve twenty-seven now.”

“Yes.”

Tom went downstairs and unlocked the front door, which Mme. Annette had locked for the night. Then he hobbled upstairs to his room where he took off his house slippers and put on shoes and a jacket. He went back downstairs and picked up his car keys from the hall table. He turned off the living-room lights, except one: he often left one lamp burning all night. Then he took a raincoat and pulled on some rubber boots, which were on the floor in the spare loo, over the shoes. He took a flashlight from the hall-table drawer, and also a lantern which was in the spare loo. This light could stand upright on the ground.

He drove the Renault station wagon out, and into the lane that led to the woods. He used only his parking lights, and having reached what he thought was the right spot, he cut them. He went into the woods with his torch, found the grave, then holding the torch so its beam was concealed as much as possible, he made his way to the toolshed, and got the shovel and the fork. These he took back to the muddy splotch which was Murchison’s grave. Then he walked calmly, thinking of conserving strength, back along the lane to the house. Tom expected Bernard to be late, and was fully braced for him not to appear at all.

Bernard was there, standing like a statue in the dark hall, in his own suit that had been wet a few hours ago, but which Bernard had draped over the long radiator in his room, Tom had noticed.

Tom gestured, and Bernard followed him.

In the lane, Tom saw that Chris’s window was still dark. Only Bernard’s light was on. “It’s not far. That’s the trouble!” Tom said, crazily amused suddenly. He handed Bernard the fork and kept the shovel, because he thought the shovel work was harder. “I regret to say it’s pretty deep.”

Bernard went at the task with his odd resignation, but his plunges with the fork were strong and effective. Bernard tossed the earth out, but soon he was merely loosening it, and Tom was standing in the trench shoveling out the soil as fast as he could.

“I’ll take a break,” Tom said at last, but his break was carrying two big stones, each of which weighed over thirty pounds, to the back of the car. He had opened the drop-door, and Tom pushed the stones in.

Bernard had reached the body. Tom got down and tried to use his shovel to prise it up, but the trench was too narrow. They both, feet apart on either side of the body, hauled at the ropes. Tom’s broke or came undone, and he cursed and tied it again, while Bernard held the torch. Something might have been sucking Murchison’s body into the earth: it was like some force working against them. Tom’s hands were muddy and sore, maybe bleeding.

“It’s very heavy,” said Bernard.

“Yes. We’d better say ‘one, two, three,’ and really give it a heave.”

“Yes.”

“One—two—” They were braced. “—three!
Oop!
”

Murchison went up onto ground level. Bernard had had the heavier end, the shoulders.

“The rest ought to be easier,” Tom said, just to be saying something.

They got the body into the car. The tarpaulin was still dripping clods, and the front of Tom’s raincoat was a mess.

“Got to put the dirt back.” Tom’s voice was hoarse with exhaustion.

Again this was the easiest part, and Tom for good measure pulled a couple of blown-down branches over it. Bernard casually dropped his fork to the ground, and Tom said, “Let’s put the tools back in the car.”

So they did. Then Tom and Bernard got into the car, and Tom drove in reverse, regretting the whine of the motor, toward the road. There was nowhere to turn in the lane. Then to Tom’s horror, he saw Chris’s light come on, just as he was backing into the road to start forward. Tom had glanced up at the dark window—Chris had a side window as well—and the light had blinked on then, as if in greeting. Tom said nothing to Bernard. There was no streetlight here, and Tom hoped that Chris could not make out the color (dark green) of the car, though Tom’s parking lights were on now, out of necessity.

“Where’re we going?” Bernard asked.

“I know a spot eight kilometers from here. A bridge—”

There was not another car on the road just now, which was not unusual at the hour of 1:50 a.m. Tom had driven back from enough late dinner parties to know that.

“Thanks, Bernard. Everything is fine,” Tom said.

Bernard was silent.

They came to the place Tom had thought of. It was beside a village called Voisy, a name Tom had never paid much attention to until tonight, when he had to pass the village marker and go through the village in order to get to the bridge he had recalled. The river was the Loing, Tom thought, which flowed into the Seine. Not that Murchison was going to flow very far with those stones on him. There was a dim and economical streetlight at this end of the bridge, but none at the other end which was black. Tom drove the car to the other end, and a few yards past the bridge. In the dark, with some aid from Tom’s torch, they shoved the stones into the tarpaulin and retied the ropes.

“Now we drop it,” Tom said softly.

Bernard was moving with a calm efficiency, and seemed to know exactly what to do. The two of them carried the body, even with the stones, with fair ease. The wooden parapet of the bridge was four feet high. Tom, walking backward, looked all around, at the dark village behind him where only two streetlights showed, ahead where the bridge disappeared into blackness.

“I think we can risk the middle,” Tom said.

So they went to the middle of the bridge, and set the corpse down for a few moments until they gathered strength. Then they bent and lifted, and with a mutual heave they raised it high and over it went.

The splash was shattering—giving the effect of a
boom
in the silence, like a cannon that might awaken the village—and then came a hail of splatters. They walked back toward the car.

“Don’t run,” Tom said, perhaps unnecessarily. Had they any energy left?

They got into the car and started off straight ahead, Tom neither knowing nor caring where they were going.

“It’s finished!” Tom said. “The damned thing’s off our hands!” He felt wonderfully happy, light, and free. “I didn’t tell you, I think, Bernard,” Tom said in a gay tone, his throat now not even dry, “I’ve told the police I dropped Murchison at Orly on Thursday. I did drop his luggage there. So if Murchison didn’t take his plane, it’s not my fault, is it? Ha!” Tom laughed, as he had often laughed alone, with similar relief after ghastly moments. “By the way, ‘The Clock’ was stolen at Orly. Murchison had it with his suitcase. I’d imagine anyone seeing Derwatt’s signature would hang on to the picture and say nothing about it!”

But was Bernard exactly with him? Bernard said nothing.

It was starting to rain again! Tom felt like cheering. The rain might, probably
would
erase his car tracks on the lane near his house, and would certainly aid the appearance of the now empty grave.

“I have to get out,” Bernard said, reaching for the door handle.

“What?”

“I feel sick.”

As soon as he could, Tom pulled closer to the edge of the road and stopped. Bernard got out.

“Want me to go with you?” Tom asked quickly.

“No, thanks.” Bernard went a couple of yards to the right, where a dark bank rose abruptly a few feet high. He bent over.

Tom felt sorry for him. Himself so merry and well, and Bernard sick at his stomach. Bernard stayed two minutes, three, four, Tom thought.

A car was approaching from behind, moving at an easy speed. Tom had an impulse to douse his lights, but left them as they were, normal headlights on, but not the brightest. Due to a curve in the road, the car’s headlights swept over Bernard’s figure for a second. A police car, for God’s sake! The roof had a blue light on it. The police car veered around Tom’s car and went on, at the same easy speed. Tom relaxed. Thank goodness. They had no doubt thought Bernard was stopping to pee, and in France that was certainly not against the law at the edge of a country road, even in plain view in broad daylight. Bernard said nothing about the car when he got back in, and neither did Tom.

Back at the house, Tom drove quietly into the garage. He took out the shovel and fork and leaned them against a wall, then wiped out the back of the car with a rag. He closed the drop-door till it half-latched, not wanting to make a bang by closing it. Bernard was waiting. Tom gestured, and they went out of the garage. Tom closed the doors and gently snapped the padlock.

At the front door, they took off their shoes and carried them. Tom noticed that Chris’s light had not been on when the car approached the house. Now Tom used his torch and they climbed the stairs. Tom motioned for Bernard to go to his own room, and signaled that he would be back in a moment.

Tom emptied his raincoat pockets and dropped the rain coat in the tub. He rinsed his boots under the tub tap, and stuck the boots in a closet. He could later wash his raincoat and hang it in the closet, too, so Mme. Annette would not see it in the morning.

Then he went silently, in pajamas and house slippers now, to see Bernard.

Bernard was standing in stocking feet, smoking a cigarette. His soiled jacket was over a straight chair.

“Not much more can happen to that suit,” Tom said. “Let me take care of it.”

Bernard moved slowly, but he moved. He took off his trousers and handed them to Tom. Tom took the trousers and jacket into his room. He could wipe off the mud later, and get it to a fast cleaners. It was not a good suit, which was typical of Bernard. Jeff or Ed had told Tom that Bernard did not accept all the money they wanted to give him from Derwatt Ltd. Tom went back to Bernard’s room. It was the first time Tom appreciated the solidity of his parquet floors: they didn’t creak.

“Can I bring you a drink, Bernard? I think you could use one.” Now he could afford to be seen downstairs, Tom thought, by Mme. Annette or even Chris. He could even say he and Bernard had had a whim to take a little drive, and they’d just come back.

“No, thanks,” Bernard said.

Tom wondered if Bernard could get to sleep, but he was afraid to propose anything else, like a sedative or even hot chocolate, because he thought Bernard would say again, “No, thanks.” Tom said, whispering, “I’m sorry I let you in for this. Will you sleep all morning if you feel like it? Chris is leaving in the morning.”

“All right.” Bernard’s face was a pale olive color. He did not look at Tom. His lips had a firm line, like lips that seldom smiled or spoke—and now his mouth looked disappointed.

He looked betrayed, Tom thought. “I’ll take care of your shoes, too.” Tom picked them up.

In his bathroom—his room door and bathroom door closed now, against Chris, possibly—Tom washed his own raincoat, and sponged Bernard’s suit. He rinsed Bernard’s desert boots and put them on a newspaper near the radiator in the loo. Mme. Annette, though she brought his coffee and did his bed, did not go into his bathroom except perhaps once a week to give it a tidying, and the serious cleaning woman, a Mme. Clusot, came once a week and was due today, in the afternoon.